Love's Liberation
by Moonlit Aria
Summary: The final confessions of a doomed man deal solely with the only 'sin' he ever regrets committing, despite the fact that it liberated him from a formerly hopeless destiny of evil.


  
  
**Disclaimer**: I do not own the books or characters, unfortunately. They are property of J.K. Rowling and respective companies.  
  
**Dedication**: No, my arm was not twisted to write this story, it just suddenly came to me this evening, apparently for no reason whatsoever. This does not mean, though, that I have joined the SS Leather Trousers, but that I'm open-minded. This is dedicated to Crystal (Finding Beauty), who wouldn't shut up about Draco to the point that I had to write about him or go insane! . . . Well, not _really_, but she does talk about him quite a deal. Anyway, this is for her and, gauging her reaction, I should be passing out tissues, as well.  
  
  
  
  


**Love's Liberation**  
_by Moonlit Aria  
  
  
  
i'm so tired of being here  
suppressed by all of my childish fears  
and if you have to leave  
i wish that you would just leave  
because your presence still lingers here  
and it won't leave me alone_  


  
_  
_

  
  
Only fools fall in love.  
  


I had lived by that since I was old enough to understand the emotion of 'love,' the power it holds over a person, and the awe it inspires in the heart.  
  
When I came to understand love, I wanted nothing of it. I wanted nothing to do with a pleasingly painful sensation in my chest or the control over my thoughts or the helplessness or the . . . anything. Anything associated with love was pushed away and replaced with a shell of ice.  
  
I knew that love meant family and friends, also, and that was one of the benefits of denying it entirely. I wanted nothing to do with my family — and, surely, they wanted little to do with me before the time was ripe — and had no desire to make friends. Wanting no one person aside from myself to hold the key to unlock the inner recesses of my _soul_, in addition to having no real need for love of family and friends, the whole loveless thing worked to my advantage.  
  
Even more-so when I entered the stage of my young life where I began to notice the subtle curves and scents and movements of the female sex. Having no need for love, nothing came attached to the interludes of pleasure I took with whatever face I found pretty or form I found appealing. I must have had almost every sexually active, attractive female there was to have. Some were fleeting, escaping with the dawn, and others I toyed with for weeks at a time . . . I delighted in the games I could contrive, pushing them and myself to the brink, then pulling back.  
  
Now, I realize it was all a farce. A vain attempt to stir within my frozen being some semblance of feeling. I was never one to enjoy inflicting pain upon myself, flinching away from the self-mutilation I had seen others with my difficulties turn to, so I attempted to awaken that fluttering of _feeling_ with other means.  
  
The means never worried me. Neither did the ends. At the time, I had no idea what I was driving for and was not even vaguely aware that my actions were a prelude to something else entirely. At the time, it was just a sport . . . something to do mindlessly between thoughts of importance . . . something by which I could measure the time I spent in hell. It's sad that a person can count their years in a place by reckoning up the number of women they've had.  
  
At the time, it wasn't sad. It wasn't wonderful, either, but I never figured anything in life could be. It was simply a game — sometimes I would play it against my mind, other times I would play it against others. None of the girls I touched ever came lurking about after I discarded them, always waiting in the shadows for my hand to outstretch . . . that was made clear at the beginning, really. None of them ever came forward announcing that something unexpected had been planted and I was going to be forced to reap the seed I had sown, so to speak. Even if something _did_ come from any of it, I doubt it was ever brought into light and cast forth soon enough to prevent some sort of scandal. That thought is enough to make me laugh, though. I can imagine some of the few girls from the outside — outside the 'circle,' that is, of a lower class, I'd imagine — being forced to take such drastic measures when faced with uncovering their shortcomings and, apparently, mistakes.  
  
Perhaps that was another reason many stayed away afterwards. Realization. Realization of the biggest mistake of their life.  
  
After all, aren't I just the boy their mothers always warned them about?  
  
That's another thought that makes me want to laugh. I'm no one all too special, if you strip away the name and attitude and looks and gold . . . just a man. I suppose it's the name and attitude and looks and gold that make me 'bad' or 'trouble' or whatever else those mothers call the boy they've always warned their innocent, virgin daughters not to fall in with.  
  
Not in love, mind you, just into an interlude. I would imagine, anyway, if only because the idea of all those girls being _in love_ with _me_ makes my stomach churn.  
  
Violently.  
  
Even now, when I understand love . . . and can actually say I've experienced it.  
  
Oh, yes, tangled in the damnable web of love on the verge of being devoured by the spider of my own passion and longing and desire. I've wrestled with it until the thin, yet impossibly strong, silken threads broke beneath my willful touch, leaving only a horribly frayed mess in the wake of it.  
  
You see, solitary love _is_ a web. I'd imagine that love existing between two people is something like a storm, around which the couple tentatively steps, until a false move sends them both tumbling into the depths of the fray and they're swept around relentlessly in a swirl of emotion.  
  
Solitary, unreturned love is a web constructed of things such as denial, doubt, and fear. And, in the corner sits an overly large spider, venomous fangs bared, ready to strike. Always, the spider strikes at the heart . . . not to put you out of your misery with a quick death, but to allow its slow-working poison to decay your heart until you are no more than an empty shell in the clutches of a feeling you cannot help but experience and a torment you cannot escape.  
  
I know all of this too well, you see, because once I loved you very dearly. And, still, I think I do. Yes, _you_.  
  
This I can admit now, because I've broken free of the web and disentangled myself from the danger of falling prey to my own raging emotions. _My _emotions. Those two words don't seem to flow so well, as if they don't really belong together, but how else should I describe the way I felt, for the first time in my life, around you?  
  
At first, I found it completely impossible . . . not only because I had pushed love away and successfully fended it off for years, but also because of who you are. You're . . . _you_. There's no other way to put it, really, that won't send me back readily to the open arms and waiting fangs of the deadly spider guarding the web of love. Only now, years after the fact, can I look upon you in my memories and relish in the subtle beauty of your face, your eyes, your voice. Like everyone in your life — or so I'd like to believe — I hated you with a burning fervor, as I had been taught to hate you, the moment I knew who and what you are. I never admitted that at first glance I thought I could enjoy your company and upon being exposed to your brilliance _knew_ it was so.  
  
No. I hated you that first year . . . and then more the second and third and fourth and even fifth. I hated you for five whole years until, as with everyone in your life — again, as I'd like to believe — I snapped from some damnably convincing reverie and realized that I was in love. With _you_.  
  
Yet, like all deplorable characters in all books revolving around a reluctantly heroic figure, I forced myself to wrestle with it in silence. For some time, actually, I denied that it was even possible and forced myself to be ill at every thought that entered my mind in which you were the central figure. That was the year I was marked, by the way. I recognize — not celebrate — the day I was brought into the world in late December and that day I recognized the seventeenth year since the first damnable day that started the entire process . . . and was taken at the end of the term to bow down before the Dark Lord, swear an oath in blood, and receive the mark of his followers.  
  
From the moment I knew I loved you until the moment I realized I was to receive the mark at the will of my father, I made the time in between — a very short time — the period in which I was going to forget whatever strange feelings I had for you and put it all aside. The mark, coincidentally, was going to be what set it all in stone — my path to darkness and my path away from you and my path away from this damnable emotion that was turning my world upside-down.  
  
As you can no doubt tell, I failed.  
  
I've failed at so many things in my life, however, that failing at suppressing this emotion made no difference. In fact, oddly, when I first saw you again after that fateful December night and my insides twisted in that blissfully painful way . . . I felt triumphed. I felt as if I had been forcing myself to do something against my will, only because my father's world dictated it, and had purposefully failed in a defiant act.  
  
I felt liberated.  
  
_You_ liberated me. You broke the chains of bondage my father had placed upon me since I was a small child and all you had to do was _exist_ in just the perfect way you always had. I felt that I could do anything I wanted to do, anything I felt was necessary, without having to look over my shoulder or into the corners of memory for a rule of social class against it.  
  
It wasn't me, though. I know it was just the strange aftereffects of love running their course through my bloodstream. Now, being much wiser, I can see that it was unbelievably intelligent to continue to suppress my feelings and act _normal_ — normal being defined by others in reference to my actions in years past. At the time, I'm not sure _why_ I did it . . . out of fear of becoming a slave to my wild emotions. Perhaps being served continually for seventeen years by house-elves had finally taken its toll and I felt the need to do harm to myself for allowing my very feelings go against my father's wishes.  
  
Either way, I never uttered a word of my feelings for you then.  
  
Not much longer after I was given the mark did it all happen . . . I know you know how it happened from your own point of view, but I can imagine things went down differently from mine. I knew in advance, from attending many meetings at my father's side, what was to befall you and your friends during our last year at school. It was kept in the back of my mind, never the forefront of my thoughts but always gnawing at me, for months before that fateful Halloween feast. As planned, I took the select few followers of the Dark Lord away before it could happen, while our more influential insider worked meticulously in preparation for the Dark Lord's arrival.  
  
I waited, with the children of Voldemort's followers, in the darkness of the forest . . . breath bated, awaiting the screams of tortured hordes and tormented by the thoughts of you being among them. At that moment in time, I couldn't describe what the fast beat of my heart felt like, but now I know it all too well. I feel it, even now.  
  
It was the apprehension of death. My own death. I feared for you, knowing that if you should die a part of me would die with you — the part you had brought to life within me, the part I feared I could not breathe without and would surely die, too, if it was taken away.  
  
Even now, when I thought that I wanted to block out every part of that night from my memory, I can still feel my heart stop in my chest as the decision was made. Without notice, I left the group in the forest and returned, as quickly as I could, to the castle, arriving just in time to hear the first of the screams that have etched themselves in my mind and echo every night when the lights are dimmed. The loudest scream was yours, I remember, and it pains to do so.  
  
The insider who had been working to prepare for Voldemort was a traitor to the Dark Lord and made preparations for his destruction. Severus Snape, the man I had always sneered at when eyes were averted for his oddities, had a hand in what was supposed to be the downfall of the most powerful dark wizard of the age. If I had not discovered this in passing his duel with the Lestranges, escaped from the destroyed Azkaban, on my way to find you, I would have stopped to gawk like a simpleton in awe of his courage. I hadn't the power to go against my father in thoughts and feelings, where Snape had the will to go against Voldemort himself in actions and deeds. I felt momentarily overshadowed by him, even, but the feeling was quickly shrugged off for a more important purpose.  
  
I found you, in apparently what was just the midway between the entrance hall and wherever the Gryffindor common room was located, flanking that damnable Potter with his other friend, wand out, preparing to fend off one of the darkly robed and hooded Death Eaters participating in the attack. It was not the Dark Lord himself, I knew, for he was off facing a foe greater than Potter could imagine being, but did not recognize the person until he spoke.  
  
I don't remember what was said, but only that within the blink of an eye Potter had been sent flying into one of the suits of armor yards away from his previous position and you — and Weasley, too, I remember clearly — had faltered to the stone floor under the agonizing curse of Crucio. Even now, perhaps three years after it all happened, your screams rip through me like a knife. A blade of scorching metal.  
  
He relented, allowed you both time to breathe before he started in again, but Weasley managed to get the upper-hand for once in his pathetically mundane life and hurtled a powerful curse — nothing of the Unforgivable variety, the wuss — at the attacker. For once in my life, I wish Weasley had the balls enough to utter the six syllables that I was forced to speak moments later when I saw the fear and pain and anger in your eyes when his life was threatened in an all too real manner.  
  
I guess I had ignored the signs everyone else had obviously seen just as you had ignored them, because I realized then that you felt the same agonizing thing I felt in my heart . . . just for _him_, not me. I thought, momentarily, of assisting the Death Eater in slaughtering all three of you — even the unconscious Potter — and removing the last bit of emotion from my life, ensuring the rise of the Dark Lord once he defeated the old man, and placing myself at his right hand . . . but, somehow, the curse I meant to hurtle at the three of you — the Golden Trio I had hated for so long — was directed to the darkly robed figure shielding me from view.  
  
Having used the curse once before, as part of my initiation into Voldemort's circle, it fell easily from my lips, despite the fact that I knew the Death Eater I cast it upon and as his lifeless body fell to the floor after the wave of green light, the hood of his cloak fell away to reveal a length of shockingly platinum hair not at all unlike my own.  
  
The last thing I remember from that night — aside from the blur of images and swirl of events — is the look that was upon your face. Shocked, thankful, appalled . . . there was love and concern there, but only for Weasley. None of it belonged to me, no matter how much I longed for it and would have gladly killed a thousand such men just to obtain it from you.  
  
Neither Dumbledore nor Voldemort died that night. Potter recovered, as did Weasley, and life went on as it had been in the shadow of the Dark Lord's rise. No one ever learned which of us it was that used the Unforgivable Curse on Lucius, as neither you or Weasley decided to tell during the inquiry and I wasn't willing to give myself up. After a while, the Ministry gave up attempting to drag the information out and was simply relieved to know that one of Voldemort's strongest supporters was dead.  
  
Mother waited until after my graduation to follow Lucius to the grave. I found her the day after the ceremony with an empty vial of poison in her lifeless hand. I'm sure her passing was as painless as his . . . or, at least, that's what I enjoy telling myself. Since then, life at the manor has dragged on from one meaningless day until the next and I have been forced to put up the facade of being a perfectly loyal Death Eater to an injured Dark Lord's cause. They never suspected it was my wand that killed my father, but only that I abandoned my post to assist him in holding Potter and his friends in one place until Voldemort arrived to do the honor of killing them.  
  
That was, at least, until I told them otherwise.  
  
You see, I've grown weary of staring bleakly at the destroyed web of my solitary love. I've watched the spider who keeps it in disarray warily for years, but I have found that it was useless all along . . . my heart has been eaten away by his poison and the empty void left in my chest cannot be filled, no matter how dearly I attempt the feat.  
  
By now, I'm sure, you've married him and are expecting some red-haired child blotched with freckles . . . I cannot picture you as a slave to the eight or nine children he'll no doubt get you with, but then again I could never picture you with anyone else but me. Perhaps that is my folly — never being able to see what is inevitable, _reality_. As I write this, sitting in the desolate relic of a legacy ended too soon, I know you are happily settled into a daily routine filled with joy and love and perfection, thinking of nothing remotely revolving around me. Yes, Death Eaters and the Dark Lord are always ebbing at the back of your mind, but I was the one who turned from the path of darkness and rescued those who I supposedly hated.  
  
I am a fool for loving you, Hermione, but I am even more a fool for believing that you could love me in return. I might not have ever thought it, but I can say that once I had foolishly taken it for granted, somehow, the more appealing choice I was no doubt entitled to due to my birth and status . . . the storm, the torrent of passionate emotions, instead of the strangling web of denial and torment. Now that I know it is never to be so, I find there is little point to my existence.  
  
If you happened to wonder, I did not mourn the passing of my parents. I mourned their lives, as I mourn every life. Living is difficult, filled with hardships and trials which the strong pass and the weak falter to, so much so that only death should be celebrated. Death is the end of hardships and trials, the end of pain and suffering, the end of need and want and the damnable emotions which wrench the heart and tear the mind into pieces. Death is eternal peace.  
  
The only death I ever thought I might be able to mourn was yours. I've mourned your life — for it brought to me these emotions which made my own more difficult — and would have mourned your death, equally, if only because it was another heart-wrenching series of events in my life. Since I would be torn if I ever lived to see the day you pass on, I've chosen to go first into the eternal peace of death's embrace.  
  
At least, I hope.  
  
They'll be here soon, Voldemort's loyal followers, and will find me sitting in what used to be my father's study, having just finished a letter to the woman I love very dearly. It's torture to kill one of your own, so you know, but death to defy the Dark Lord himself. I haven't the ability to take my own life as my mother so bravely did, but I have a mind to tell Voldemort how I feel, which will certainly prove I defy him, if only within my mind.  
  
I feel a bit happy, if you're curious. Joyous that he is, once again, reduced to a shadow of his former self and his followers are being relentlessly hunted by Aurors.  
  
I also feel loved, if only in my imagination and not at all the way I wish to be. I think, even though I declined all the love from everything in the world until it snuck upon me unaware, I found it in the least likely place and from the least likely people. I suppose, I found the love that comes with friendship. An odd sort of love from an odd sort of friends . . . and it kept you and Weasley from turning me over to the Ministry. Not exactly the love I want from you, but it will have to do.  
  
And, I can die knowing that, in some way, you loved me.


End file.
